Sunday 30 December 2018

Happy New Year


At the start of this year I blogged a bit of a moan about how I hated leaving an old year behind, one into which I’d grown comfortable, and how suddenly – after the short period of reality-denial called Christmas – I had to plunge into a new, cold, bleak, year and build everything up again.

Well, here we are again, and this time I don’t feel quite so bad. Rather, I’m glad to be putting a bad year behind, and hoping for some fresh chances in the new one. On a personal level, 2018 was a year of sadness and loss, frustration, failure and fatigue (though I did enjoy the long hot summer). On a public level, well, I try to keep politics out of these blogs, but the world is hardly in a happy state, is it. Depression, anxiety, boredom, apathy and anger should not be healthy, rational, everyday responses to how things are, but it is so. And that’s before we think about jumping off the white cliffs 
on 29th March.

So the opportunity for a new start is always to be welcomed. An artificial contrivance, like a date – January 1st, say – is always a good catalyst for a change of mood.

I recall, as a child at this time of year, being encouraged (a) to write “thank you letters” and (b) to make New Year Resolutions. The former was a creative challenge; what would be a really respectable intended use for a five shilling postal order? The latter sounded very grown-up and tedious, but I had my own response, which might take the form of tidying up the big flat Kodak film box in which I kept my Meccano parts. Having done so, and organised my trunnions and angle girders, I would resolve that this year constructional activity was going to be different, and I would build something bigger and better than before. And so, one fine morning, before school re-started, I would settle down on the living room floor to build the Forth Bridge. Not full size, obviously, no, just to a reasonable, modest scale. By around half past nine I would have run out of parts, and life would continue exactly as before. If only I’d thought of building HS2; it would probably be finished by now.
 
Happy New Year.

Saturday 1 December 2018

Recent Paintings at Bingham Library


Today marks the opening of an exhibition of 14 of my recent paintings at Bingham public library, Nottinghamshire. The library is in Eaton Place, close to the Market Place and to the main free car park.



Paintings are for sale upon enquiry to the library staff, and purchases may be collected on the last day of the exhibition, Saturday 22nd December. Prices are as follows:

Hyde Park Corner     £250
Portland Place     £250
St Pancras Skyline     £280
Secret Island     £150
Portobello Haar     £100
Fittee     £150
The Doctor’s In Winter     £100
Hot Prefab     £100
Awayday     £100
The Classic Murder     £120
Sissinghurst     £150
The Deal Castle     £200
Pavilion Gardens CafĂ©     £150
Dungeness     £200

The subject matter is varied, although some of the works recall the long hot summer this year. Scenes include Sissinghurst, Brighton and Dungeness in the south of England, and “Fittee” (Aberdeen) and “Portobello Haar” from north of the border. As usual, there are London scenes – busy traffic at Hyde Park Corner and in Portland Place, and the atmospheric tenements which used to fringe the eastern side of St Pancras Station, a familiar sight to many a rail traveller from the East Midlands.

“The Classic Murder” is an imaginary location inspired by Tolmers Square, Euston, while “The Deal Castle” is based on a pub just across the road from the wonderful church of St George in the East, in east London, but renamed and relocated to a fictional setting. “Hot Prefab” and “Secret Island” are idealised portrayals of humble surroundings on a summer’s day, while “The doctor’s in winter” perhaps recalls childhood emotions surrounding medical appointments. This painting was inspired by a visit to the Ranmoor district of Sheffield earlier this year. “Awayday” tries to recapture something of the childhood experience of waiting to go on a train journey from a country station, the location being very loosely derived from childhood trips on the Crewe line west of Derby.
 
If you can get to Bingham during December, please go along to the library, and enjoy.